Web Extra: The Tories should fear the dynamic new team of professionals that Brown is assembling

Thursday, 6th March 2008

It is an entirely new No10 operation. This is appreciated by the Blairites, “This shows the core Brownite team were not up to government,” says one former Blair staffer. “Although they spent ten years scoffing at us.” The Tories appear to have not yet have appreciated the scale of the change in the nature of their enemy. It is as if Mr Brown – a lifelong fan of Goldman Sachs - has called in the company to revamp his government as if Brown Inc were a struggling company fighting a hostile takeover bid from a predator.

What is striking about Mr Brown’s new recruits is that there is hardly a Labour party membership card among them: these are not the fanatical Brownite guerrillas of New Labour Mark One. Mr Carter has no ideological bent and Mr Heywood is considered a natural conservative.

The Conservative operation now perched in Labour’s old home of Millbank contains no former Goldman Sachs partners or chiefs. Indeed, one is hard-pushed to find many with experience of the 2001 election campaign, let alone wider industry. It is also losing, rather than attracting, stars.

There is Oliver Dowden and Richard Hardyment who were – rightly or wrongly – credited with the digging which led to the donorgate scandal which imploded on Mr Brown at the end of last year. Then George Bridges, formerly Mr Cameron’s political secretary. All three have drifted away in recent months —bright young men who, for whatever reason, did not see their future with the Tories.

Those who remain grumble about lack of direction. Caroline Spelman, the party chairman, is regarded as a cipher, and there is no chief of staff figure running Central Office in the way Lord Ashcroft leads his marginal seat team. While Mr Cameron may on occasion wish he were shot of Lord Ashcroft so he did not have to continually answer questions about this Lord’s tax status, he cannot afford to lose perhaps the best-performing part of the CCHQ operation that works well. There was no election last October partly because Lord Ashcroft had prepared the marginal seats so brilliantly. What’s needed is more of his organisational skills, runs the argument, not less of it.

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Dave B

March 7th, 2008 12:59am Report this comment

The Mail reports that Ms Moses won't be taking up Mr Brown's job offer after all.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=526652&in_page_id=1770

Fraser Nelson

March 7th, 2008 9:58am Report this comment

Dave B, this story sufaced in the Standard just as we were going to press. But from what I can gather, she's still signed. She is already in and out of No10 and cleared her desk at Centre Forum yesterday. she's expected to start formally on Monday.

DPT

March 7th, 2008 1:22pm Report this comment

Excellent article Fraser. As a fan of Brown it has been clear for the past few weeks - and particularly since the Northern Rock announcement - that No 10 is getting its act together. The main problem in Labour has been a lack of overarching strategy or narrative. Most Labour MPs have said privately that this is not Brown's fault however. This is because he does have a vision of whaut he wants his Britain to be but until now hasn't had the practical ability to implement that vision from No 10. I believe that is now changing and we are now entering an interesting time in British politics when finally we have two parties in competition for power rather than just one.

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